Patients suffering from heart failure often experience enlarging of the heart. Increase in the heart size imposes stresses on the heart walls. Such increased stress aggravates the heart failure and causes the condition to worsen and correspondingly enlarges the heart further. Additional enlargement of the heart compounds the stress on the heart walls and repeats the pattern. Preventing enlargement of the heart reduces wall stress and minimizes the undesired increase in heart size.
In an attempt to address enlargement of the heart, socks positionable around the outer surface of the heart have been developed. The sock is constructed from elastic fabric mesh filaments. The sock is designed to constrain enlargement of the heart by absorbing some of the stress in the heart walls. One disadvantage of this type of device is the need for extensive surgical intervention to implant the device around the outer surface of the heart. Implantation includes separation of the sternum and opening of the chest by spreading the ribs.
Additionally, splints have been designed to traverse chambers of the heart, extend through the walls, and anchor on the heart outer surface. Multiple splints are fed through a chamber and fastened to the outer surface of the heart. Using this device, like the mesh sock described above, requires extensive open chest surgery. Additionally, neither of these designs provides means for applying electrical resynchronization and/or defibrillation therapy to the heart.
What is needed is an endocardial splint assembly that overcomes the shortcomings of previous designs. What is further needed is an endocardial splint assembly that is implantable without requiring open chest surgery.